Lesser Prairie-chicken Use of Harvested Corn Fields during Fall and Winter in Southwestern Kansas

The lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) has declined in numbers in Kansas primarily due to the conversion of sand sagebrush (Artemisia .filifolia) prairie to cropland. The lesser prairie-chicken in Finney County, Kansas exists primarily in large fragments of sand sagebrush prairie, and it forages during fall and winter on waste grain in harvested com (Zea mays) fields adjacent to prairie fragments. We used radio-telemetry to monitor lesser prairie chicken locations and found no significant relationship between numbers of bird locations and amounts of waste grain on the ground in harvested com fields. Even the harvested fields with the least amount of waste grain seemed to have sufficient amounts of food available for foraging lesser prairie-chicken. There appeared to be no need to develop supplemental food sources for wintering lesser prairie-chicken populations that have access to harvested fields of irrigated com in Finney County

The X-ray and radio-emitting plasma lobes of 4C23.56: further evidence of recurrent jet activity and high acceleration energies

New Chandra observations of the giant (0.5 Mpc) radio galaxy 4C23.56 at z = 2.5 show X-rays in a linear structure aligned with its radio emission, but anti-correlated with the detailed radio structure. Consistent with the powerful, high-z giant radio galaxies we have studied previously, X-rays seem to be invariably found where the lobe plasma is oldest even where the radio emission has long since faded. The hotspot complexes seem to show structures resembling the double shock structure exhibited by the largest radio quasar 4C74.26, with the X-ray shock again being offset closer to the nucleus than the radio synchrotron shock. In the current paper, the offsets between these shocks are even larger at 35kpc. Unusually for a classical double (FRII) radio source, there is smooth low surface-brightness radio emission associated with the regions beyond the hotspots (further away from the nucleus than the hotspots themselves), which seems to be symmetric for the ends of both jets. We consider possible explanations for this phenomenon, and conclude that it arises from high-energy electrons, recently accelerated in the nearby radio hotspots that are leaking into a pre-existing weakly-magnetized plasma that are symmetric relic lobes fed from a previous episode of jet activity. This contrasts with other manifestations of previous epochs of jet ejection in various examples of classical double radio sources namely (1) double-double radio galaxies by e.g. Schoenmakers et al, (2) the double-double X-ray/radio galaxies by Laskar et al and (3) the presence of a relic X-ray counter-jet in the prototypical classical double radio galaxy, Cygnus A by Steenbrugge et al. The occurrence of multi-episodic jet activity in powerful radio galaxies and quasars indicates that they may have a longer lasting influence on the on-going structure formation processes in their environs than previously presumed.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS; 6 page

Select Atrophied Regions in Alzheimer disease (SARA): An improved volumetric model for identifying Alzheimer disease dementia

INTRODUCTION: Volumetric biomarkers for Alzheimer disease (AD) are attractive due to their wide availability and ease of administration, but have traditionally shown lower diagnostic accuracy than measures of neuropathological contributors to AD. Our purpose was to optimize the diagnostic specificity of structural MRIs for AD using quantitative, data-driven techniques. METHODS: This retrospective study assembled several non-overlapping cohorts (total n = 1287) with publicly available data and clinical patients from Barnes-Jewish Hospital (data gathered 1990-2018). The Normal Aging Cohort (n = 383) contained amyloid biomarker negative, cognitively normal (CN) participants, and provided a basis for determining age-related atrophy in other cohorts. The Training (n = 216) and Test (n = 109) Cohorts contained participants with symptomatic AD and CN controls. Classification models were developed in the Training Cohort and compared in the Test Cohort using the receiver operating characteristics areas under curve (AUCs). Additional model comparisons were done in the Clinical Cohort (n = 579), which contained patients who were diagnosed with dementia due to various etiologies in a tertiary care outpatient memory clinic. RESULTS: While the Normal Aging Cohort showed regional age-related atrophy, classification models were not improved by including age as a predictor or by using volumetrics adjusted for age-related atrophy. The optimal model used multiple regions (hippocampal volume, inferior lateral ventricle volume, amygdala volume, entorhinal thickness, and inferior parietal thickness) and was able to separate AD and CN controls in the Test Cohort with an AUC of 0.961. In the Clinical Cohort, this model separated AD from non-AD diagnoses with an AUC 0.820, an incrementally greater separation of the cohort than by hippocampal volume alone (AUC of 0.801, p = 0.06). Greatest separation was seen for AD vs. frontotemporal dementia and for AD vs. non-neurodegenerative diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: Volumetric biomarkers distinguished individuals with symptomatic AD from CN controls and other dementia types but were not improved by controlling for normal aging

Further Defining Spectral Type "Y" and Exploring the Low-mass End of the Field Brown Dwarf Mass Function

We present the discovery of another seven Y dwarfs from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Using these objects, as well as the first six WISE Y dwarf discoveries from Cushing et al., we further explore the transition between spectral types T and Y. We find that the T/Y boundary roughly coincides with the spot where the J-H colors of brown dwarfs, as predicted by models, turn back to the red. Moreover, we use preliminary trigonometric parallax measurements to show that the T/Y boundary may also correspond to the point at which the absolute H (1.6 um) and W2 (4.6 um) magnitudes plummet. We use these discoveries and their preliminary distances to place them in the larger context of the Solar Neighborhood. We present a table that updates the entire stellar and substellar constituency within 8 parsecs of the Sun, and we show that the current census has hydrogen-burning stars outnumbering brown dwarfs by roughly a factor of six. This factor will decrease with time as more brown dwarfs are identified within this volume, but unless there is a vast reservoir of cold brown dwarfs invisible to WISE, the final space density of brown dwarfs is still expected to fall well below that of stars. We also use these new Y dwarf discoveries, along with newly discovered T dwarfs from WISE, to investigate the field substellar mass function. We find that the overall space density of late-T and early-Y dwarfs matches that from simulations describing the mass function as a power law with slope -0.5 < alpha < 0.0; however, a power-law may provide a poor fit to the observed object counts as a function of spectral type because there are tantalizing hints that the number of brown dwarfs continues to rise from late-T to early-Y. More detailed monitoring and characterization of these Y dwarfs, along with dedicated searches aimed at identifying more examples, are certainly required.Comment: 91 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Purinergic signalling and immune cells

This review article provides a historical perspective on the role of purinergic signalling in the regulation of various subsets of immune cells from early discoveries to current understanding. It is now recognised that adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) and other nucleotides are released from cells following stress or injury. They can act on virtually all subsets of immune cells through a spectrum of P2X ligand-gated ion channels and G protein-coupled P2Y receptors. Furthermore, ATP is rapidly degraded into adenosine by ectonucleotidases such as CD39 and CD73, and adenosine exerts additional regulatory effects through its own receptors. The resulting effect ranges from stimulation to tolerance depending on the amount and time courses of nucleotides released, and the balance between ATP and adenosine. This review identifies the various receptors involved in the different subsets of immune cells and their effects on the function of these cells

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead